State Legislature

UPDATE: Good Results for Environment in 80th Legislature

2007 Legislative Agenda

Save Texas Parks                      

From the wildlife habitat and drinking water supplies they protect to the countless recreational opportunities they provide, our parks represent a big part of what makes Texas special. But years of budget cuts have created a crisis in our state and local parks. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) has had to lay off dozens of park rangers, close campgrounds, cut back hours of operation, and cancel plans to acquire environmentally sensitive lands.

Last fall, the agency even considered selling part of Big Bend Ranch State Park in order to raise additional funds. TPWD has announced that a new round of proposed cuts would mean the agency would have to close 18 state parks.

Environment Texas supports:

• The Montford Commission recommendation to increase state parks funding to at least $105 million per year by dedicating all of the sporting goods tax to parks.
• The appropriation of the remainder of Proposition 8 General Obligation Bonds for park repairs approved by the voters several years ago.
• A constitutional amendment to guarantee permanent funding for parks.

Go Solar!

Texas is in a prime position to be a world solar leader. If solar panels were distributed on roofs and over parking lots throughout 5 percent of our urban areas, they would produce more than half of our state’s current electrical consumption. Solar is most effective during the peak demand periods when ERCOT warns we’ll have shortages in the next few years, and creating a large market for solar will drive costs down. Owners would save money on their monthly electric bills, tons of air pollution would be cut, and our energy grid would become more stable.

Environment Texas supports:

• Establishing a solar rebate program, funded by a surcharge similar to the PUC efficiency surcharge, that directs $100 million per year to help consumers install solar systems.
• Offering solar as a standard option in all new home construction.
• Ensuring that any home or business owner who generates solar power has the right to be connected to the electrical grid and sell excess power to the local utility for a fair price.
• Requiring that new schools are built with solar.
• Prohibiting homeowner associations from blocking home solar installations.

Encourage Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency is the cleanest, quickest and cheapest way to get smart about energy use and cut down on the waste, saving both money and the environment in the process.

Environment Texas supports:

• Increasing the PUC goal for efficiency savings to 50% of the growth in   demand.
• Regular updating of residential and commercial building codes.
• Extending the goals for energy use reduction by cities and counties for another five years and establishing these goals for schools, universities and state agencies.
• Establishing efficiency standards for ten key consumer products, as recommended by the State Energy Conservation Office.
• Creating an Energy Star Tax Holiday.

Curb Global Warming

According to James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “the Earth’s climate is nearing, but has not passed, a tipping point, beyond which it will be impossible to avoid climate change with far ranging undesirable consequences.” These consequences, he said, would “constitute practically a different planet” and include sea level rise, heat waves, drought, more intense hurricanes, decreased crop yields, water scarcity, and the spread of infectious diseases.

Existing technology could substantially reduce global warming pollution by making power plants and factories more energy-efficient, making cars go farther on a gallon of gasoline, and shifting the country to clean, renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass.

Environment Texas supports:

• Capping Texan carbon emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2020.

Ensure Clean Air

More than half of Texans live in places where the air is unsafe to breathe. Pollution from power and industrial plants, cars and trucks, and even ships docking in Texas ports are making many Texans sick, scarring our scenic vistas, and costing our economy billions of dollars in health care and other costs.

Environment Texas supports:

• A time-out on the permitting of new coal plants until the state evaluates the impacts on Federal air quality requirements and until alternatives are considered.
• Requiring existing coal-fired power plants to meet additional emissions reductions for smog-forming nitrogen oxides, soot-forming sulfur dioxide, toxic mercury, and global warming- forming carbon dioxide.
• Legislation to require automakers to comply with the Clean Cars Program in Texas.
• Enacting policies to protect public health by reducing emissions in toxic hotspots, increasing scrutiny of permits in areas where toxic pollution levels are already excessive, and increasing public access to air toxic information.
• Using all dedicated funds, fees and taxes flowing to the Texas Emission Reduction Program and the Low Income Repair Assistance Program for their intended purpose: cleaning up the air.
• Requiring the state to recover any economic benefit derived by polluters who break the law.

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